


Say You Won't Let Go

by ungoodpirate



Series: Belated Pynch Week 2017 [4]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Accidental Drinking, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, College, Day 4, Gangsy, M/M, Non-Chronological, Pynch Week, Pynch Week 2017, background blue/gansey, college party, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 10:38:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11849838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: “I don’t drink,” Adam said.Ronan didn’t know what this guy was doing at a frat house party if he didn’t drink, but Ronan was here and wasn’t fraternizing.“Okay.”Adam looked Ronan over then, scrutinizing. Ronan smoothed his face to blaize uncaring, which was an easy look to put on. It was one of his well-practiced masks“You don’t have something to say about that? Everyone always has something to say about that.”A few years ago, Ronan would’ve taken that bait, but it wasn’t a few years ago.“It’s your life, man.”Something shifted in Adam’s expression. Under all the caginess a spark of warmth. Ronan had passed a test.---AKA, another alternative first meeting au, in which Ronan and Adam are introduced at a college party by Blue, featuring a bi pride bracelet, slightly emotional mature Ronan and Adam, my headcanon for Ronan's college major if he ever went to college, slow dancing, Henry Cheng as the president of a frat, stealth matchmakers Blue and Gansey. All this and more in a story based of the first verse of the song 'Say You Won't Let Go.'





	Say You Won't Let Go

**Now**

 

“Adam, meet Ronan, a weird loner. Ronan, meet Adam, a weird loner. Have fun.”

 

Sargent dropped the wrist of the young man she had just dragged through the crowded house party, and was off squeezing her way back through it. Probably off to find Gansey. Ronan had wondered where he gotten himself as well. 

 

Ronan had been pleased enough in the spot he had staked out, propped against the wall between a potted ficus and the keg. He hadn’t ever really liked college parties like this. Too many people, too many of whom he didn’t know, too many of whom he didn’t like. 

Free beer wasn’t enticing enough to balance out the unpleasantness of socializing. Ever since Ronan had made a vow to himself to stop fighting after almost getting himself and Gansey expelled second semester Freshman year, his reasons for attending parties had diminished. Usually, at frat parties like this, it was easy to find someone drunk enough, awful enough, and stupid enough that Ronan didn’t feel guilty punching them in the face. 

 

A streak of a light from a car’s headlights passing by the windows illuminated the strange and interesting angles of the stranger’s face. Ronan’s fingers twitched, 

 

Strike drinking and fighting from the list. Wasn’t there a third reason people went to parties? One that Ronan didn’t really indulge in regularly, but was looking very enticing at the moment. 

 

“So I heard you’re a weird loner,” Ronan said, then tipped the solo cup remains of his second serving of beer down his throat, for fortitude or something. 

 

The young man -- Adam -- huffed. “Apparently,” he said. His shoulders were curled under his flannel shirt, and the way his jaw clenched when some partygoer brushed past him to get to the keg convinced Ronan that Adam was like him, not all that interested in being here. A specimen in the wrong environment.

 

Ronan followed Adam’s gaze to the keg, to the cup said pushy partygoer filled overflowing.

 

“You want a drink?” Ronan asked, although it wasn’t really his to offer.

 

“No,” said Adam, distantly. “I don’t drink.”

 

Ronan didn’t know what this guy was doing at a frat house party if he didn’t drink, but Ronan was here and wasn’t fraternizing. 

 

“Okay.”

 

Adam looked Ronan over then, scrutinizing. Ronan smoothed his face to blaize uncaring, which was an easy look to put on. It was one of his well-practiced masks 

 

“You don’t have something to say about that? Everyone always has something to say about that.” 

 

A few years ago, Ronan would’ve taken that bait, but it wasn’t a few years ago. 

 

“It’s your life, man.”

 

Something shifted in Adam’s expression. Under all the caginess a spark of warmth. Ronan had passed a test. 

 

“So what’re you studying?” Adam said, but Ronan missed it as Adam lifted a hand -- long-fingered, blunt-nailed -- to scratch behind his ear. His shirt cuff fell down to reveal a knitted bracelet in pink, purple, and blue. It was both so out of place and oddly familiar that it took him two seconds to just know.

 

“Please tell me Sargent made that.” 

 

“What? Oh.” Adam glanced at his wrist, twisted at an angle Ronan found aesthetically interesting. “Yeah, she made it for me. It’s… bi pride.”

 

The night kept improving. 

 

“Biology,” Ronan said. 

 

“Huh?”   
  


“I’m majoring in biology. I’m trying to get into veterinary school.”

 

“You want to be a vet?” Adam asked. 

 

“I like animals.” 

 

Eyebrows so light they were almost invisible dipped down, a reminder that Adam didn’t know him. Most people didn’t know him, so hearing out if he was serious or deadpan joking wasn’t any easy maze. Ronan had changed a great deal since high school, but some things hadn’t changed. His fashion sensibilities (all black all the time), his hair cut (buzz cut), his general disdain for human kind (written in his face, his posture, his tone of voice). 

 

“That’s cool,” Adam said after a pause. So Adam had passed a test.

“I sort of grew up on a farm,” Ronan explained. With the words out of mouth, Ronan looked down at his empty cup. Had he really only had two beers? He didn’t just give out his backstory to strangers. He prefer they believe myth, that he was manifested out of smoke and their nightmares. Yet here he was having a civil conversation with a cute boy a party he didn’t even want to be at. 

 

Why? Well, he knew why. He just had to hope Sargent wasn’t so cruel to introduce him to a cute boy he had no chance with. Was she that cruel? Ronan wasn’t sure. He was still figuring her out. Gansey and she had been dating a little over a semester. 

 

“What about you?” Ronan asked. 

 

Adam tucked his hands into his blue jeans backs. Ronan followed them, then jerked his gaze back up to Adam’s face. Had he noticed? It didn’t seem so. 

 

“I’m double majoring in pre-law and engineering.” 

 

Ronan choked. “Fucking why? Are you trying to kill yourself?” 

 

Adam laughed. It was a sound so perfect, Ronan could’ve laid back on it like it was a cloud. 

 

“That’s generally the reaction.” Adam shrugged. “I just don’t want to not have my options.”

 

An arousal of applause, clattering, and whoops interrupted their conversation and drew attention over to the beer pong table. Their host of the evening, the Pi Theta president, and the reason Gansey was here, thus the reason Ronan was here, Henry Cheng had climbed on top. 

 

Ronan made a sound like guttural sigh. 

 

Adam cut his eyes to him and said, “Same.” 

 

“There’s not much to say,” said Henry, striking a wide spread power pose like he were on a stage and not a surface already slicked with beer spills. “But welcome, Bulldogs!” 

 

Then, the bass dropped. One of Henry’s crony friends had been stationed out by the stereo, making this perfectly manufactured moment. The crowd, tipsy and easily pleased, screamed. 

 

With the now pounding music reverberating across the room, it was impossible to hold a conversation. Usually this wouldn't be a problem for Ronan. It wasn't a ‘usually’ type of night. 

 

He refilled his cup from the keg for want of something to do with his hands. When he looked back up, Adam has backed up a few paves, was looking over the heads at really nothing. He was giving Ronan an escape from an obligation conversation. Again a reminder that Adam didn't know him, didn’t know that Ronan didn't talk to anyone on obligation.

 

**Later**

 

_ Ronan was a few inches taller, but forehead to forehead they could’ve been one being. His hands on Adam’s hips were holding, fond of the jarring hipbones against his palms.  _

 

_ Adam’s arms were a warm weight around his shoulders. His fingers dipped in, ran over this short prickle of his hair at the nap of his neck. Ronan, who didn’t gasp, who was too cool and unaffected to gasp, gasped. An involuntary shift and their noses bumped.  _

 

_ Oh. Oh fuck.  _

 

_ Ronan wanted to kiss him. It was not a revelation, exactly. He had a vague sense of this for most of the night, but mouths so close, bodies touching, he wanted it. His lips burned.  _

 

_ The song changed, slow to fast. Christ, he could murder Henry Cheng. He didn’t know if it was Henry Cheng’s fault, exactly, but he felt like it could be.  _

 

_ They stopped swaying in the way of dance, but they don’t unwind. Adam’s fingernails scratch over his skin.  _

  
  


**Now**

 

Ronan nudged Adam’s arm with his elbow, jerked his head in direction, and then went that way without another gesture or word. As much as Adam can guess, he was supposed to follow. He had decision, then, to follow or not. 

 

To stay would be to at the edge of a party he didn’t feel comfortable in, but that was something he was familiar with now, after three full years at this university. To go would be a nothing or something, boredom or excitement. A mystery that Adam wasn’t familiar with. 

 

Ronan wasn’t his friend, but Ronan also hadn’t reacted like an asshole over Adam’s not drinking or his bracelet. It was a low bar, but it was surprising how many people got tripped up on it. 

 

Adam followed. A celebratory party marking off the beginning of senior year wasn’t a night to be a weird loner. 

 

In their destination, the kitchen, Ronan wrenched open the refrigerator door.

 

“Coke or apple juice?” he said. 

 

“What?” 

 

“Coke or apple juice,” Ronan repeated, crooking his head to eye over his shoulder. What a figure he made, tall and lean, with the profile of a statue. He didn’t look at all like James Dean, but there was something James Dean about him, enough to make him answer without Adam knowing the implications.

 

“Coke.” 

 

“Great.”  

 

Ronan emerged from the fridge with a two liter of cola. He put it on the counter by where Adam had staked a leaning spot and then started banging through the cabinets until he found a cup, which also banged down on the counter. 

 

“Here’s where they were hiding the good stuff,” he said, pushing up on his toes and lifting down a a handle of rum from a high shelf.  

 

“You can’t just ransack their kitchen,” Adam said. 

 

Ronan raised his eyebrows. His eyebrows were as dark as his eyes were ice chip blue. His face read of a wild mischief. “Cheng said to make ourselves welcome,” he said   

 

“That’s not exactly what he said.”

 

Ronan shrugged. The brazen disregard for other people’s possessions was something Adam would usually find off putting, because it seemed to be how people who didn’t have to account for every penny did unthinkingly.  

 

However, when Ronan poured out a glass of coke and said, “Here, carry this around and no one will bother you about not drinking,” Adam saw it for what this was. It was exactly like Blue making him his bracelet. 

 

Ronan poured mixed drink of coke and rum for himself. He lifted his glass. 

 

“Fucking cheers,” he said as dry as the night air. 

 

With chagrin, he lifted his newed donned glass of soda and clinked the rim against Ronan’s.

 

**Later**

 

_ Ronan smelled good. He smelled really, really good. Like something… cologne-y. And like beer. Which was not something Adam found all that appealing, but past that was cologne and skin and boy. A very appealing combination, especially since it had -- ahem -- been a while.  _

 

_ Adam took advantage of his summer break in the most workaholic fashion possible: the maximum number of summer cram semesters the university allowed, living in a cheap apartment in town, and working all his extra hours at part time jobs while all the rest of the student population was gone for summer so he no demands on his time for a social life or being a member of prestigious clubs and societies to pad his resume. It left little time or energy for dating. _

 

_ Right now, half of his face was smashed against said Ronan’s shoulder, because Ronan’s sturdy arm was wrapped around Adam’s middle, holding him. There was whole other poem forming in Adam’s dizzy mind about that arm.   _

_ Ronan was holding him up because Adam couldn’t walk on his own right now, not with his wavering vision or the ankle he had twisted pretty viciously on the steps back at the frat house.  _

 

_ “Hey, hey, hey,” Ronan said in his snappish tone, but it would’ve been more effective if Adam’s hearing ear wasn’t the one against Ronan’s shoulder. “Pay attention to the sidewalk. One foot in front of the other.” _

 

**Now**

 

“What did you do to him, Lynch?” Sargent demanded.

 

Four of them were gathered out on the frat house’s front porch, where the air was warm because it was still September, but at least it was fresh. Adam was keeled over the porch’s railing, heaving in careful breathes, Gansey standing by. 

 

“He doesn’t drink!” she said. 

 

“I didn’t do anything to him,” Ronan replied. “I just went to the bathroom, and when I finally found him again, he was like this.” 

 

It had taken him a while to find Adam again in the crowded party. Ronan feared he had left, all because Ronan had excused himself off to the bathroom, because, sure he had to piss, but he also needed a second alone to compose himself after that slow dance. The whole time he searched through the party, he kept thinking: Maybe that had put off the wrong signals? Maybe Adam had thought Ronan had blown him off first and was now doing the same?  

 

When he finally found Adam again, it was too late. 

 

“As much as I can get from him,” Gansey said. “He thought the jungle juice was punch.” 

 

“That’s an amuteur mistake,” Ronan said. 

 

“He doesn’t drink!” Blue said again. 

 

Something squirmy turned over in Ronan’s gut and it definitely wasn’t that he was about to hurl from overindulging. His tolerance was much higher than that. 

 

It was just that Adam’s first taste of alcohol tonight hadn’t been some mistake with jungle juice, but when he had picked up Ronan’s rum and coke instead of his virgin coke instead, that he had taken a few gulps before he had put it down and said with an adorably wrinkled brow, “This tastes weird.”

 

It had been an honest mistake, and while Ronan made his rum and cokes strong, he didn’t make them  _ that _ strong. 

 

That had been before the slow dancing. The slow dancing might’ve been a direct result of Adam’s low tolerance and lowered inhibitions. 

 

Squirm.

 

Sargent sighed. “I guess we’ll take him back to his dorm.” 

 

“No,” Ronan said. “You and Dick enjoy the rest of the party. I’ll get him home. What dorm is he in?” 

 

So plans were arranged. Sargent was the one no nonsense enough to pat down Adam’s pants pockets to find his keys. She was always the one to say, “I’d be giving you a dressing down right now about how you better not try and take advantage, but I know you’re better than that.” 

 

**Later**

 

_ Ronan dropped Adam onto his bed. Adam sunk back into his pillow with a little hum. It was cute.  _

 

_ Ronan ruffled through Adam’s things for a few minutes until he found all the things he needed: A bottle of water, a bottle of generic brand advil, his wastebasket. If he thought Adam had already dozed off, he was wrong, for when he came back to set the wastebasket at his bedside, to set the rest on the desk, Adam’s eyes were narrowly opening, and tracking him.  _

 

_ “You’re going to need this in the morning,” he said quietly. Sargent had already gotten a bunch of water into Adam already, or Ronan might insist he drink it now. He kicked the wastebasket. “You might need this in the middle of the night.”  _

 

_ He should leave now, but Adam was still wearing his shoes and didn’t look like he was going to move or have control of his fine motor skills again anytime soon.  _

 

_ Ronan sat down on the end of Adam’s mattress, a thin thing provided by the school, and tugged at the laces. The process took a few minutes and a few swears as Ronan learned how difficult it was to maneuver shoes off someone else’s feet. To be honest, Ronan’s fine motor skills were also a bit suppressed at the moment.  _

 

_ He heard Adam snort at some of more creative swear combinations.  _

 

_ Finally, he was ready to leave, then he felt something in his pocket. Right, keys. He stepped up to the head of the bed again and slammed them down on the table. “Keys.” _

 

_ Adam held out an arm, whispered, “Ronan” like he was trying to draw Ronan in for a secret. It worked. Ronan leaned over and in. Adam latched his hand around the back of Ronan’s neck and pulled him closer while leaning up. He brushed a skating kiss against Ronan’s mouth, brief and misaimed. Ronan withdrew.  _

 

_ With a gentle brush of fingers through Adam’s hair -- something he wouldn’t have been brave enough to do if either of them had been truly sober -- he whispered, “You should get some rest.”  _

 

**Now**

 

Adam had heard the term ‘black out drunk’ before but that was not what happened to him last night. He got plenty drunk, drunker than he ever had been in his life and would never be again probably, but he remembered everything fairly well. To his embarrassing detriment.  __

 

He had slept through breakfast, and now had plans to meet Blue for a light lunch. When he stepped into the campus center building, he spotted Ronan right away, lounging on one of the couches, a set of bulky headphones on, head bobbing. Adam could probably walk right past him, or turn around and come in a different door. 

 

Then Ronan looked up and spotted him. He raised a hand. Adam raised one back. 

 

When he walked toward him, Ronan took his headphones off. 

 

“Hey,” Adam said, shifting weight between his feet. He couldn’t think of a thing else to say. 

 

“I see you’re alive,” Ronan said. “How’s the hangover?”

 

“I feel like I want to spoon out my brains.”

 

“Sounds about right,” Ronan said. 

 

Adam shrugged. “I feel… really embarrassed about last night,” he said. Maybe admitting the embarrassment would lessen it, like it was the secret words to break a curse. 

 

“Don’t be, Mr. Lightweight,” Ronan said. Then, after a prolonged moment when the only thing between them was the beat of the music playing out from Ronan’s headphones, held in his lap, he added, “Hopefully you’re not embarrassed about everything.” 

 

Adam felt his ears heat up. “No, not everything.” 

 

In a few minutes, Blue and Gansey showed up hand-in-hand, with Blue having lunch plans with Adam, and Gansey having lunch plans with Ronan, and suddenly all four of them having lunch plans together. 

 

A few minutes after that, crowded around a table in the cafeteria together, when Ronan said something to make Adam laugh despite the hangover headache, Blue and Gansey shared a significant look, a wordless congratulations on a successful plan.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I'm cheating because I wrote half of this months ago... but this isn't Nanowrimo, this is pynch week and there are no rules about writing the stories within the day. That's just the rule I like to follow. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy! Comments give my life meaning and keep me from doubting all my life choice up to this point!


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